Thursday’s landline outage for much of Southeast Nebraska included the city of Lincoln’s 911 service. After 935 minutes, from 7:45 AM to 11:20 PM, media outlets published alternative emergency numbers. As an IT guy for a high performance comapany, I was shocked to see this happen in several of the communities that I serve. Landline service is usually regarded as the gold standard for Five Nines service.
Due to this recent outage it will take 181 years of perfect service to reach 99.999% uptime on this system. Ironically Windstream’s website promotes Four Nines of reliability for home service with the Your Landline is your Lifeline campaign. But surely 911 service is not Four Nines, with almost an hour a year of downtime?
Our goal isn’t to be hard on a local phone company, but since many of our boardroom ideas come from enterprise server rooms, we want to see what businesses can learn.
First, it appeared as though both the primary and redundant switch were modified and then upgraded. Whether or not this was the ultimate issue, only 1 technician can tell us that, but we do know that whenever upgrading a system, we need to verify a backup (yes good switches can have backup configurations) and verify the primary before modifying the secondary.
Secondly, whenever your system demands a high level of reliability, you want to have options, whether that is rolling to an alternative site or a different telecommunications company, many small businesses are implementing backup Internet connections to keep communications a priority.
Lastly, I’m sure that in this case these were enterprise switches, but often even in larger deployments, business decision-makers overlook the impact that switches play in a business environment. Whether you are looking to prioritize traffic for a VOIP deployment or just have a more stable network, switches and other network infrastructure are key to keeping your environment stable.
In almost every New Year’s Eve celebration you will hear that song “Auld Lang Syne“. “Auld Lang Syne”, meaning “Old Long Since” or “long long ago” in our field, it may refer to things we did last year.
While we frequently don’t expect to use the word tradition to describe anything we do with technology, you might be surprised at the ways tradition affects your use of technology. Many IT software and hardware companies have lulled us to sleep with the expectation that we can continue paying maintenance, replace hardware on a pre-set schedule and all of our technology problems will stay away for another year. The truth of the matter is that even technology savvy companies get into habits that lead technology down the dangerous road to tradition.
I recently had a client call to ask if we could help develop a backup solution. They have been using the same backup software from a major vendor for the past 8 years, keeping maintenance and upgrading when needed. As I took the call, I illustrated, based specific requirements, I actually would recommend a different solution today than I would have just 6 months ago. Another client just this week asked me, “can I call-in to get my voice mail”? Funny, I thought, I haven’t dialed-in to voicemail in years, simply viewed it on my mobile device as a .wav file or utilize ‘single-number-reach‘ to leave one voice mail for all devices.
While your technology traditions may not date back to the 1700s like Auld Lang Syne, being conscious of those areas where technology becomes tradition helps your company keep from becoming stagnate. Happy New Year from Five Nines.
As 8″ of snow blanketed the Midwest, many grumbled about the challenges of conducting business in while worrying about road conditions. Several brave souls at Five Nines dared to think differently, creating the first ever Five Nines Flyers. These unique thinkers crafted a one-of-a-kind racing sled from a Dell r710 server box, a little extra tape, a trash bag and a passion for fun. Was this a lesson in the uncalculated risks of a tail-bone injury or a way to keep work from becoming stale?
Five Nines Flyers
Developing a culture of innovation begins with individuals who are willing to think outside of the immediate work in front of them. Businesses often expect individuals to come up with an idea when asked, but we need to understand that innovation often begets innovation. That is, whether you are looking for a fun idea with 8″ of snow on the ground or a creative way to structure a 25 branch office, it is easier when you are surrounded with innovators.
While at Five Nines we may not have discovered a new Olympic sport nor did we actually break Clark Griswald’s land speed record, we may have inspired a few to think differently about work, life and even innovation.
We have much to be thankful for in 2009. While the economic downturn affected nearly every industry and profession, technology companies continued to persevere and even innovate. For this, we recognize some of the technologies that have made us pause to reflect from the past year.
iPhone Competitors
We won’t go as far as to say there are any killers in the bunch, but a new range of devices have smartphone users excited about new apps and better answers to mobility. True, the iPhone still remains dominant, but continued innovation by Palm’s webOS, Google’s Droid and better RIM devices are bringing new ideas to a larger mobile dinner table.
Windows 7
No need to utter the words of Microsoft’s last OS, Windows 7 sheds a new light on the possibilities for desktops and laptops present in this new OS. With touch, cleaner operating system, better performance and the largest beta testing ever, Windows 7 trumps its predecessor. We can be appreciative that we finally have an operating system that provides new functionality without sacrificing stability.
Virtualization
Perhaps a perfect storm for actualization partners in 2009, this year with companies looking to cut costs and gain better redundancy, both VMware and Microsoft are building better, less expensive ways to implement virtualization. Let’s be fair, part of what has allowed VMware to implement more virtualization over the last year is the fact that Microsoft now extensively supports virtualization on nearly all server platforms including Exchange and Domain Controllers. Whether a business looking for better disaster recovery, less hardware expense or more redundancy, we have reason to give thanks. Even hardware vendors have brought costly SAN storage into small business price ranges.
The Rise of the Netbook
Lowering the cost for remote devices, Netbooks continue to allow for a successful end-user experience while keeping the processing in the cloud. This important step allows many people to be grateful for greater processing and mobility per dollar.
The Cloud Gets Clearer
More has been developed for cloud-computing in the last year. It’s hard to avoid the barrage of news about the future of cloud-computing. While still young, businesses are beginning to trust some computing elements in the cloud. Both Microsoft and Google have announced and are rolling out extensive cloud-computing models and Amazon’s elastic cloud expands. Businesses owe much thanks to the companies who are extending their computing infrastructures to support our processing and storage needs.
I asked one of our engineers how he felt after joining Five Nines recently from another company. His response was simple, “I’m glad to not be the smartest person in the company”. I found his answer both encouraging and thought-provoking.
While pointing out that Five Nines has some highly skilled engineers, he also illustrated a principal that is not often embraced in an industry full of know-it-alls. Most of us have experienced the arrogant nature of technical staff who feel like they are the smartest person in the room or even the company, which usually only encourages intellectual arguments, not productive collaboration.
Sensing that you are ‘not the smartest person in the company’ will not only help you to learn from those ahead of you, but it will also encourage you to push harder to improve yourself personally and professionally. I recently ran across an article on CIO.com titled, “Why Even CIOs Need Smart Friends”, which points to the same concept, encouraging technology leaders to find smart friends in a variety of roles. If each of us as technology professionals realizes that we are not the smartest, we begin to measure our success not in our intelligence related to the people we know, but in the solutions that make businesses successful.
Regardless of your position and profession, we hope you can say that “you are glad to not be the smartest person in the company”, and if you find that you are, it may be time to make some new friends.
